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Review: X-Men: Days of Future Past, or The Longest-Running Non-Rebooted Movie-Comic Franchise So Far

The X-Men film franchise is now on its fifth film (2013’s The Wolverine is considered a spin-off, which would make 2009's X-Men Origins: Wolverine a prequel slash spinoff – or a sprinquel, if I may coin the term. What's that? No, I may not coin the term? Okay then.), and Days of Future Past (DoFP, because I love acronyms) is the second film in what we all first thought was a reboot. DoFP ends somewhere before the events of X-Men: The Last Stand, which could actually allow the filmmakers to pretend that third X-Men movie never really happened.

This movie satisfies the first element of a reboot, because it is part of an existing franchise, which is the X-Men franchise, obviously. But it does seem to continue its predecessor’s universe. Continuing or discontinuing a universe can be done in a number of ways, such as 1) changing the primary creative team (writer, director); 2) changing the story, narrative, or character arc that would conflict with (and therefore supersede) the preceding film(s); or 3) to be more visually obvious, changing the entire cast.

DoFP is not a reboot of its predecessor X-Men: First Class. Yes, they changed directors (bringing back Bryan Singer to replace First Class’s Matthew Vaughn), but the principal cast of James McAvoy as Professor X and Michael Fassbender as Magneto are still intact.

But was First Class a reboot? You could say that. It did change its creative team (Vaughn replacing Last Stand’s Brett Ratner at the helm) and its principal cast. But the cast was supposed to play younger versions of their characters, because the film takes place in the 1960s. So technically, First Class was a prequel, and could’ve been used to supersede the previous X-Men films if it chose to.

But it didn’t. That’s because DoFP takes place in two timelines, which are the 60s and the present day. And the present still uses the same cast of the first three X-Men films, such as Patrick Stewart, Ian McKellen, an aged-down Famke Janssen, and Ellen Page in full-lesbian mode.

So is it really a sequel, a prequel, or a reboot? I’m not sure anymore. All this time travelling has addled my brains. Also, I think I should save my discussion on reboots for Michael Bay’s upcoming Transformers flick.